Columns

On New Year’s Day 2012, Emma Longstreet was going to church with her family at 11 a.m. when a car ran a red light and slammed into their van, instantly killing Emma and critically injuring her mother, father and three brothers.

After drinking until 5:30 a.m. and sleeping just a few hours that morning, the driver of the car, Billy Patrick Hutto Jr., still had a blood-alcohol concentration of almost 0.2, more than twice the legal limit.

I spent a delightful Sunday afternoon revisiting Main Street thanks to Cherry Doster’s and Cole Waddell’s reflections in their articles, “Town used to mean Main Street,” in the March 23 edition of The Lancaster News. While looking longingly at the photos (courtesy of Travis Bell), it was once again one of those lovely Saturdays when we went “to town.”

Each year, the week that includes March 16 is designated as “Sunshine Week.”

It’s a time to remind government officials about the laws that govern them, laws that require meetings to be held in the open and public records to be made available to citizens. Sunshine Week aims to advance the idea that government works best when the sun is permitted to shine in.

We in South Carolina love our history. As William Faulkner said of the South, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Lately I have been reading a wonderful book about our state’s past – and clearly there are lessons to be learned.

The book is Deliver Us from Evil, by Dr. Lacy K. Ford, and it’s about how the South, especially South Carolina, dealt with the issue of slavery from the time of the drafting of the U.S. Constitution until the days prior to the Civil War.

Curiously, one of the most debated items in the entire S.C. House budget process was a combined $70,000 reduction in appropriations to the College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina Upstate. $70,000 is an utterly trivial part of a $25 billion budget, but the reason for the reduction is what raised the ire of many House members.

It’s been another week of circumstances which scream corruption. First, Lois Lerner was back to testify or actually recite the Fifth Amendment on the IRS scandal.

When the show was over and meeting closed, Rep. Elijah Cummings pitched a fit because he wanted to ask some questions. When Rep. Darrell Issa turned the microphones back on, Cummings actually had no questions for the witness. He simply wanted to make a statement about the proceedings.